ZBrush Interview: Deus Ex Human Revolution

[aurick]

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One of the oldest and most respected franchises in the gaming world, Deus Ex has long been awaiting a third installment. It's here at last! Released on August 23, 2011 "Deus Ex: Human Revolution" has already garnered terrific praise from critics and even higher accolades from gamers. As an example, IGN gave the game a score of 9.0 which they classify as "amazing". The player reviews on the same site give it a solid 10.

On an artistic front, the game has a very distinctive look that manages to be both realistic and stylized. It is a beautiful game with clever details everywhere you look. What's more, since the story focuses on human augmentation (bionics) moving into the mainstream, the art team had to blend man with machine. It had to look high tech, yet because this story is actually a prequel to the previous games it also had to look more primitive than what has been seen in the past.

For this interview, we spoke with Sébastien Legrain -- known here at ZBC as sebcesoir. He's been an avid ZBrush user for a long time now and many of you will no doubt remember his The RiSiNG thread (http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=151628) or phenomenal Projection Master tutorial (http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/tutorial.php?lesson=sebastien). Always willing to share with the community, he was more than happy to talk about his team's techniques as they tackled Deus Ex.

We hope you enjoy the interview!





Click HERE for the Interview (http://www.pixologic.com/interview/deusex3/1/)



Here's a sampler of the many images that you'll find. You can view them in high resolution from the interview pages.



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©2011 Square Enix, All Rights Reserved. Images courtesy of Eidos Montreal




Please join us in thanking Sébastien for his time sharing this interview, as well as congratulating his entire team on the impressive job that they did with the game's art!

Thank you also to Eidos Montreal and Square Enix for consenting to share this interview with the ZBrush community.




Use this thread to discuss the interview!



Be sure to also check out our many past interviews, which can be found in the ZBrush Artist Interviews (http://www.zbrushcentral.com/forumdisplay.php?f=88) forum and the User Stories (http://www.pixologic.com/interview/) page at the Pixologic website.




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[Sindo]

The designs of this game look awesome.

[Santis]

Looks like a very cool game, thanks for sharing this! :tu:

[skdzines]

curious as to how many subtools are in the mechanical hand alone?

[Sebcesoir]

I couldnt tell, surely around 20 maybe...
Most of time just 1 finger is made, or objects are kept in multiples parts for baking purpouse.

We only assemble them vor screenshot purpouse.

[EGGO]

Great job! Great interview! And game is just amazing!
Thanks :)

[Muddpitt]

Any chance we can get Sebcesoir (http://member.php?u=13180)'s village people costume shot from the end games credits in here :D. Awesome work, Awesome game!

[undoz]

Fantastic work on Deus Ex! The art you guys made will be a source of inspiration for many years.

[GX@W]

why this ain't in top row? haha. great work.

[Darukin]

Love the game, especially the style, themes and art direction. Truly an artistic masterpiece! Well done to all the artists of this game who made the visuals and style live up to its name! I'm starting to have suspicions that the artists are augmented or something, coz these skills are 'more than human'. :P (excuse the lame joke :P)


Yeah why isn't this top row anymore, that makes no sense lol!

[sculptor.zb]

Great!! :tu:

[dapharmer]

should've known seb's hard edge work was on display in this game :D have been playing it as often as possible since last week and i don't care if people want to bemoan any of the gfx in game or the animations... the game is beautiful and as fully realized and made to feel like the design philosophy was cohesive throughout as is possible.


if you havent played it yet give it a try.. it's a beautifully wonderfully hard hard game at times.. in such a good way




AND DAMN YOU SEB!!! you had to go and mention someone working on thief! :D first you bring back deus ex and then you mention new thief in works.. are you trying to ruin any free time i have by giving me extremely great games!

[LeoAMD]

Awesome. I'm loving this game

[Darukin]

AND DAMN YOU SEB!!! you had to go and mention someone working on thief! :D first you bring back deus ex and then you mention new thief in works.. are you trying to ruin any free time i have by giving me extremely great games!Yes, the same studio is going to work on Thief 4!! Very exciting, coz along with Deus Ex this is one of greatest classic franchises! Can't wait!

[SolidSnakexxx]

This is so awesome... Thx you for sharing! :tu: :tu:

[SelWorks]

I love this game and its art. I recommend the augmented edition for the artbook. Awesome work Sebastien and great interview. I am in love with Canada and Montreal and I hope someday I can work for there

[samuraiwu]

Fantastic!:tu: :tu: :tu: It is a wonderful game!

[SLI_Fallen]

Hmmm. Page wont load for me.

[O/MI]

link is brocken... :cry:

[soulty666]

Does anyone know where I can find the High res cinematics or which studio made them. Hard to find. The ones I have seen on the adverts are amazing.

[Fenrir406]

Sweet interview! I've been meaning to buy the game as soon as I can its looks amazingly fun! :tu: :tu:

[Joecyriac]

Was hoping you'd interview the Deus Ex team! Inspiring work. Amazing design and great execution.

[Nera]

@soulty666:

The trailer was done by Visual Works, subsidiary of Square-Enix Japan. Would be great to have interviews by them too :)

[Ralramahi]

cant wait to play this game. I love the art work :D

[soulty666]

Cheers Nera

[dapharmer]

just played for like 7-8 hours straight.. i love this game... love just taking my sweet time exploring every corner and little detail..

[alexcgart]

Very nice interview, not like the others (others are cool, but this one is different), when I read it I feel that Eidos Montreal is really young and motivated team. I'd like to think - they are close to us here :rolleyes:

The game is very cool for me, may be the engine is a bit old, but models, design, this warm light - just brilliant. I'll put this game near SC:Conviction. :tu:

[dapharmer]

the funny thing is i dont think the engine is old. i think they actually created it for this game... and all of the issues most people seem to have with the gfx (which i dont really share) were more design decisions then model deficiencies. from the interview Seb made it a point of noting that they tried going for the uber realism on the models but it didnt fit with the world they were making. Doing things the way they did allowed thto create much more diversity within the game while using only one texture set per enemy type.. just using layered bits of the design so that one soldier gets arm pads one gets a different helmet.. etc etc.


personally i think the game design works because the entire game seems like it exists within the same universe. nothing seems to be out of place in terms of design to me. and with a game with as many microscopic details in it as this one you really cant have everything be flawlessly realistic or you're gonna be taking up 4 discs instead of 1. as far as the rest of the engine goes though... once you his Hengsha in the game and get to the Hive nightclub, you honestly cannot tell me of another game that pulls off as well the amazing live rendered lighting that this game uses on the front vidoe wall of the club. and that's just one building. later on when you're going through the laser gridded server at tai yong medical, and you can see every single individual laser beam in the entire room (something like 80 seperate beams) .. all moving at the same time. its crazyness. but it's puposeful too. you can plan out your attack of the entire room just by observing ALL of these lasers at the same time and knowing exactly where you can move and you cant.

most games like this you go a few in game meters at a time and decide your course of action.. deus ex you really gotta plan it out well before going anywhere and all the little deisgn cues of the game make that possible




hoping to finish my first playthrough today ;)

[Eastman]

I like the insight the interview gives us on the process, and considering the restrictions that were in place, and the "hacks" that had to be made, it also explains why the visuals are so uneven in places. Overall it was a great experience playing the game (I spent 30 hours or so in it), and by the look of things, the team pulled off a herculean feat :) Congrats on delivering!

[dapharmer]

just finished last night with my 1st playthrough clocking in at about 30 hours of time extremely well spent :) .. great job again guys

[Intervain]

Congrats on a great game Seb and the team. I love the fact that the characters are detailed but not overdone - there's just enough there.

[zeoyn]

Seb,

You mention that you use Projection Master a lot.
Projection Master can give us a false feedback regarding the model resolution as it affects the pixols and then projects the result to the geometry. In order to keep the detail do you use highly subdivided geometry to capture the projected detail? Or do you consider that you are working at subpixel level and whatever the mesh resolution gets is fine?

Thanks!
Jose

[idlemind]

you know what I dont know what I am putting off playing this game for.. now after reading all this I am surely going to rent it right away and if its half as good as EVERYONE says I will buy it on PC
great work here :tu:

[RageNrock]

Fantastic talent. Great job.

[ravanshad]

hello,your character is perfect,thank you